I can't think of a language these days that won't produce sufficient performance for most applications.
I have a long list of technical news articles of web based projects that were unusable because they didn't provide sufficient performance to replace mainframe apps.
You solved the problem the customer presented in 6 minutes?
You need serious work on your reading comprehension. The guy was a consultant who called his boss to ask a question pertaining to the client assignment, a 10 minute call of which about 6 minutes pertained to the client, and the boss billed the client 1 hour for the call, according to the post.
Why not just sit on your yacht and write a cool video game or something?
I'm pretty sure that as a founder of a statistical math software company he thinks his pet project is cool. And he might be writing it on a yacht, I don't know.
The point of a pet project is he scratches his itch, and customers get what he comes up with when he comes up with it. Sort of like open source, except it isn't.
Now, why this billionaire guy works on closed-source corporate stuff instead of an open-source project, where he wouldn't have to worry about things like deadlines and customers and such, I have no idea.
His billions came from closed source he wrote as a product for a company he founded. The summary says that his pet project is not as profitable as some of the other products like SAS. But it sounded like a product for his company.
In other words, he's still focused on his company with closed source code, but he's able at this point to focus on pet projects that are not as profitable.
You could hire someone else to do the monkey stuff.
Reading through this thread I see one reference after another to someone who is actually able to write working code as monkeys. Shouldn't the people who can't finish a programming job be referred to as the monkeys? (assuming there is some need to refer to a monkey at all, which there must be since/. is littered with references to it in any programming thread)
I call it equal trade. They can do what they want as long as they import from us as much as they export. I would call what exists NO trade. Trade requires substantial amounts of both imports and exports to be trade.
Yes, we all know that IT isn't the gold mine it used to be...
The gold mine was in stock price speculation with little to no merit based on IT sales or achievement. Siebel rode that wave and cashed out to Oracle but vulture money isn't flowing like it used to be for anything with web in the prospectus to pull off a second go round, so from his viewpoint the easy pickings are over.
Siebel wouldn't have any idea about all the software achievements ahead of us to be done that are being posted. That's hard work, not easy pickings and get rich quick from stock speculation.
After all, what other language is there that you can not only write programs in, but also cause wonderful facial ticks in "real programmers" and fill their hearts with dread?
well, if we're going to get down and dirty, I'll see your VB6 and raise you RPG/free. There, I can see some real programmers hearts filling with dread already.:)
But I do have an open source RPG project going, and some heavy duty RPG web serving coming up. Google Code is hosting it: http://code.google.com/p/rdwrites/
I don't have any pointer code in the first program posted but I'll be adding a file utility program for our iseries Unix style file system where pointer based data structures are used to access file attributes, etc., all the typical Unix C stuff, but preferable to do it all in RPG on the iseries in my opinion, although we do bind in the C library to do standard C error calls.
But first program released is a 5250 file maintenance program, with the other stuff mentioned coming.
The ascii files zip is notepad readable and shows what current RPG code looks like. My goal is to open source very high performance example RPG code compared to standard bloated or scripted web fare. But nothing to demo on that yet.
But who on earth though it was a good idea to give internet access to someone with access to valuable source code? Whatever happened to role based access restrictions?
Most posts are assuming the code was stolen to attack GS, or sell it, or duplicate GS trading. The Russian was VP of the technology involved and a VP because he actually knows something. Being Russian is clue #1.
The guy was leaving GS to take a position at a competitor. Making a personal copy of your code you developed (and other code involved) is illegal but not uncommon. Maybe the FTP'ing to a European computer is throwing people off, but smart people do things like that to throw people off, versus say FTP'ing to their home computer.
I'm not sure about the encryption thing, for example who says it's encrypted and how they know and whether it's a GS lie or not, but I would expect this guy to encrypt the source code zip before sending it off to his European stash account to retrieve later. (much later, as in after he was sure his personal computers wouldn't be searched after leaving.)
I unfortunately am not bored at all, between coding/debugging and trying to keep the sales going in any way I can while trying to figure out how to solve the problems this Ask Slashdot is about;-).
I agree with the post following yours from conner_bw about looking into working your product into plugins. Also the post above about blowing up when trying to load an MP3 without downloading a DLL first. That's going to be a real common occurrence and should be checked for and dialog displayed with the download URL you have in your documentation PDF.
But the suggestion I'm going to make is the opposite of your current approach. You've hit the wall in terms of a function set / readily available market. Really no amount of fine tuning functionality or pounding on doors is going to change that much any time soon.
You're already in multimedia heaven, all you need is one cool freebie effects demo with the name of your product on it and you're into viral marketing. Maybe a PDA and/or applet demo that displays images from the currently playing song? Like waterfall or white noise but as images. Here you aren't duplicating your technology faithfully, so that sound is transformed faithfully, but using your technology to transform sound into imnages on the fly.
One hot app that everyone has to have would make your product name a household name.
You might get a couple of sales out of it in the process.:)
I have no doubt that one more teams of auditors are running all the numbers and investigating every lead. There will be no shortage of folks digging for his buried treasure.
They already tried and came up empty. And Madoff lived quite modestly compared to others who had those kind of careers on Wall St.
We're talking billions missing here, beyond what was paid out to investors and fees to the middlemen. The government knows it and he's not explaining what happened to it, which is why he got the max of 150 years.
It couldn't have been a Ponzi scheme because he didn't pay IT out.
Except he did pay out, at least to some of the investors.
Most wouldn't want to of course, due to the high apparent returns. But if he'd refused when they insisted it would have generated suspicion, don't you think?
I bolded and capitalized IT, which is short for all of it. Yes, he paid scheduled returns
on a monthly or quarterly basis, and redemptions as requested up to the end.
However, many if not most did not take scheduled payments or redemptions, it was an investment, and he took in far more money in recent years to be specific than he paid out.
So as I say, he didn't pay it out. Also, the returns were not relatively high to other hedge fund returns, so much so his clients referred to the investment as bonds even though they weren't.
In which case, those sons will have a very weak case when the regulators and others come looking for the sons to give up anything they got from Madoff's fund.
The recovery of the loans is already being sought. This is a no-brainer.
Madoff was evil, but this is nonsensical. The people he stole from were rich, and even losing fortunes in Madoff's scams and the stock markets, still have more than enough money for their personal needs.
There is no basis for this statement. Many of Madoff's investors (and many of them not even knowing they were Madoff investors) had their entire invesment in the fund and lost it all. I've seen lots of reports that they even had mortgages on their properties and now have to sell their homes, if they can in this market. Others have started working minimum wage jobs. Yes, like others, but no, not as you describe above, with more than enough money for their personal needs.
15% isn't normal. Madoff's stated returns were less than that, and even that was high enough to be considered borderline incredible. Even 5% is high if the investment is very low risk.
You must have not been paying attention to the hedge fund returns.
And 15% is long term stock market return. Any one investment plan getting it is another thing, but hedge funds were reporting higher than 15% returns.
Madoff's reported returns were so low in comparison that his clients referred to their investments as a bond even though it was ostensibly a hedge fund.
The three driving forces of human are greed, fear and greed. There is this one guy who promises (and seemingly can also deliver) insane ROIs in the two digit percentages when others are struggling to even come out even, where do people go?
There is no basis for this statement. Madoff reported returns that were consistent but at 10 to 12% below most other promised returns.
When someone makes the same "profits", no matter whether the market soars or collapses, you can't tell me he is really doing normal investments.
With short selling money can be made when the market collapses. He told people he could make money as long as the stocks move. Lots of people say this. The math isn't there to make the profits he did in the way he described it, that is including stop loss buying, but was potentially there if without the stop loss or with inside market knowledge.
Most of his clients assumed he had inside market knowledge, and they sought him out eagerly for it. Obviously that is not something they will want to admit.
The fun part is, the worse the markets did, the better his scheme worked because people went to him since he was the only one who still made a buck.
There is no basis for this statement. He was sought after eagerly throughout the biggest booms as well as busts, even though he returned results less than others in the boom years. His clients got some comfort from that. Again, that is not something they will want to talk about now after everything is lost.
It was far more than cutting corners. He didn't keep records because he was doing some kind of extremely risky trading with the money, in my opinion.
If he wasn't trading it as the government contends, then he couldn't lose any of it in that horrible market last year and everything paid in and out is all there was. Really easy math. Only he wasn't paying out nearly what he was taking in.
You won't see the government address this at all. They don't know where the money is and lavish lifestyle is all they've got for you. Quick! Look over there!
I'm saying the government can't find or account for most of the recent money, so they're saying look, look what a lavish life style he lived to divert attention from what they don't want to admit.
It couldn't have been a Ponzi scheme because he didn't pay it out. The math isn't there to account for it. But Ponzi scheme is the easiest thing to call it so that's what they're doing. And of course Madoff himself is caling it that. That he self describes something that no one understands and explains nothing about it should be clue one for everyone. But people prefer the spectacle to hearing that no one understands where the money is.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't think of a language these days that won't produce sufficient performance for most applications.
I have a long list of technical news articles of web based projects that were unusable because they didn't provide sufficient performance to replace mainframe apps.
rd
Unless that language isn't Turing complete, I'm gonna have to call bullshit, here.
same result includes such things as response time, not just whatever Turing complete comes up with whenever it comes up with it.
rd
Understand this part...
You solved the problem the customer presented in 6 minutes?
You need serious work on your reading comprehension. The guy was a consultant who called his boss to ask a question pertaining to the client assignment, a 10 minute call of which about 6 minutes pertained to the client, and the boss billed the client 1 hour for the call, according to the post.
rd
...doing the hardest part of the project and being called a monkey for it.
Actually I only hear that on /. Apparently nerds trying to be cool.
rd
Why not just sit on your yacht and write a cool video game or something?
I'm pretty sure that as a founder of a statistical math software company he thinks his pet project is cool. And he might be writing it on a yacht, I don't know.
The point of a pet project is he scratches his itch, and customers get what he comes up with when he comes up with it. Sort of like open source, except it isn't.
rd
Now, why this billionaire guy works on closed-source corporate stuff instead of an open-source project, where he wouldn't have to worry about things like deadlines and customers and such, I have no idea.
His billions came from closed source he wrote as a product for a company he founded. The summary says that his pet project is not as profitable as some of the other products like SAS. But it sounded like a product for his company.
In other words, he's still focused on his company with closed source code, but he's able at this point to focus on pet projects that are not as profitable.
rd
You could hire someone else to do the monkey stuff.
Reading through this thread I see one reference after another to someone who is actually able to write working code as monkeys. Shouldn't the people who can't finish a programming job be referred to as the monkeys? (assuming there is some need to refer to a monkey at all, which there must be since /. is littered with references to it in any programming thread)
rd
Fair trade or NO trade!
I call it equal trade. They can do what they want as long as they import from us as much as they export. I would call what exists NO trade. Trade requires substantial amounts of both imports and exports to be trade.
http://www.rdwrites.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1397 (A solution for our trade deficit)
rd
Yes, we all know that IT isn't the gold mine it used to be...
The gold mine was in stock price speculation with little to no merit based on IT sales or achievement. Siebel rode that wave and cashed out to Oracle but vulture money isn't flowing like it used to be for anything with web in the prospectus to pull off a second go round, so from his viewpoint the easy pickings are over.
Siebel wouldn't have any idea about all the software achievements ahead of us to be done that are being posted. That's hard work, not easy pickings and get rich quick from stock speculation.
rd
Any pointers?
No pun intended?
After all, what other language is there that you can not only write programs in, but also cause wonderful facial ticks in "real programmers" and fill their hearts with dread?
well, if we're going to get down and dirty, I'll see your VB6 and raise you RPG /free. There, I can see some real programmers hearts filling with dread already. :)
But I do have an open source RPG project going, and some heavy duty RPG web serving coming up. Google Code is hosting it: http://code.google.com/p/rdwrites/
I don't have any pointer code in the first program posted but I'll be adding a file utility program for our iseries Unix style file system where pointer based data structures are used to access file attributes, etc., all the typical Unix C stuff, but preferable to do it all in RPG on the iseries in my opinion, although we do bind in the C library to do standard C error calls.
But first program released is a 5250 file maintenance program, with the other stuff mentioned coming.
The ascii files zip is notepad readable and shows what current RPG code looks like. My goal is to open source very high performance example RPG code compared to standard bloated or scripted web fare. But nothing to demo on that yet.
rd
But who on earth though it was a good idea to give internet access to someone with access to valuable source code? Whatever happened to role based access restrictions?
Most posts are assuming the code was stolen to attack GS, or sell it, or duplicate GS trading. The Russian was VP of the technology involved and a VP because he actually knows something. Being Russian is clue #1.
The guy was leaving GS to take a position at a competitor. Making a personal copy of your code you developed (and other code involved) is illegal but not uncommon. Maybe the FTP'ing to a European computer is throwing people off, but smart people do things like that to throw people off, versus say FTP'ing to their home computer.
I'm not sure about the encryption thing, for example who says it's encrypted and how they know and whether it's a GS lie or not, but I would expect this guy to encrypt the source code zip before sending it off to his European stash account to retrieve later. (much later, as in after he was sure his personal computers wouldn't be searched after leaving.)
rd
I unfortunately am not bored at all, between coding/debugging and trying to keep the sales going in any way I can while trying to figure out how to solve the problems this Ask Slashdot is about ;-).
I agree with the post following yours from conner_bw about looking into working your product into plugins. Also the post above about blowing up when trying to load an MP3 without downloading a DLL first. That's going to be a real common occurrence and should be checked for and dialog displayed with the download URL you have in your documentation PDF.
But the suggestion I'm going to make is the opposite of your current approach. You've hit the wall in terms of a function set / readily available market. Really no amount of fine tuning functionality or pounding on doors is going to change that much any time soon.
You're already in multimedia heaven, all you need is one cool freebie effects demo with the name of your product on it and you're into viral marketing. Maybe a PDA and/or applet demo that displays images from the currently playing song? Like waterfall or white noise but as images. Here you aren't duplicating your technology faithfully, so that sound is transformed faithfully, but using your technology to transform sound into imnages on the fly.
One hot app that everyone has to have would make your product name a household name.
You might get a couple of sales out of it in the process. :)
rd
I have no doubt that one more teams of auditors are running all the numbers and investigating every lead. There will be no shortage of folks digging for his buried treasure.
They already tried and came up empty. And Madoff lived quite modestly compared to others who had those kind of careers on Wall St.
We're talking billions missing here, beyond what was paid out to investors and fees to the middlemen. The government knows it and he's not explaining what happened to it, which is why he got the max of 150 years.
rd
I'm sorry, why does it take serious economic knowledge to run Nasdaq? Running it doesn't involve trading.
Madoff didn't just run NASDAQ, he co-founded it based on electronic trading he and his brother developed as a competitor to the NY Stock Exchange.
He was instrumental in perfecting electronic trading, and was a renowned decades long expert at it.
rd
It couldn't have been a Ponzi scheme because he didn't pay IT out.
Except he did pay out, at least to some of the investors.
Most wouldn't want to of course, due to the high apparent returns. But if he'd refused when they insisted it would have generated suspicion, don't you think?
I bolded and capitalized IT, which is short for all of it. Yes, he paid scheduled returns
on a monthly or quarterly basis, and redemptions as requested up to the end.
However, many if not most did not take scheduled payments or redemptions, it was an investment, and he took in far more money in recent years to be specific than he paid out.
So as I say, he didn't pay it out. Also, the returns were not relatively high to other hedge fund returns, so much so his clients referred to the investment as bonds even though they weren't.
rd
In which case, those sons will have a very weak case when the regulators and others come looking for the sons to give up anything they got from Madoff's fund.
The recovery of the loans is already being sought. This is a no-brainer.
rd
Madoff was evil, but this is nonsensical. The people he stole from were rich, and even losing fortunes in Madoff's scams and the stock markets, still have more than enough money for their personal needs.
There is no basis for this statement. Many of Madoff's investors (and many of them not even knowing they were Madoff investors) had their entire invesment in the fund and lost it all. I've seen lots of reports that they even had mortgages on their properties and now have to sell their homes, if they can in this market. Others have started working minimum wage jobs. Yes, like others, but no, not as you describe above, with more than enough money for their personal needs.
rd
15% isn't normal. Madoff's stated returns were less than that, and even that was high enough to be considered borderline incredible. Even 5% is high if the investment is very low risk.
You must have not been paying attention to the hedge fund returns.
And 15% is long term stock market return. Any one investment plan getting it is another thing, but hedge funds were reporting higher than 15% returns.
Madoff's reported returns were so low in comparison that his clients referred to their investments as a bond even though it was ostensibly a hedge fund.
rd
Why do universities invest money ?
They invest private endowments and use for annual scholarships and the like from the proceeds.
It's impossible not to invest it, even if you buy US Treasuries with it.
rd
The three driving forces of human are greed, fear and greed. There is this one guy who promises (and seemingly can also deliver) insane ROIs in the two digit percentages when others are struggling to even come out even, where do people go?
There is no basis for this statement. Madoff reported returns that were consistent but at 10 to 12% below most other promised returns.
In 2008 he reported returns of 5%.
rd
When someone makes the same "profits", no matter whether the market soars or collapses, you can't tell me he is really doing normal investments.
With short selling money can be made when the market collapses. He told people he could make money as long as the stocks move. Lots of people say this. The math isn't there to make the profits he did in the way he described it, that is including stop loss buying, but was potentially there if without the stop loss or with inside market knowledge.
Most of his clients assumed he had inside market knowledge, and they sought him out eagerly for it. Obviously that is not something they will want to admit.
The fun part is, the worse the markets did, the better his scheme worked because people went to him since he was the only one who still made a buck.
There is no basis for this statement. He was sought after eagerly throughout the biggest booms as well as busts, even though he returned results less than others in the boom years. His clients got some comfort from that. Again, that is not something they will want to talk about now after everything is lost.
rd
madoff did not really get 'caught', his sons ratted him out (good for them). If not for that he would be doing it today.
He allegedly confessed to them and they called a lawyer for themselves and the FBI essentially at his behest.
rd
Another corner he cut to make a buck.
It was far more than cutting corners. He didn't keep records because he was doing some kind of extremely risky trading with the money, in my opinion.
If he wasn't trading it as the government contends, then he couldn't lose any of it in that horrible market last year and everything paid in and out is all there was. Really easy math. Only he wasn't paying out nearly what he was taking in.
You won't see the government address this at all. They don't know where the money is and lavish lifestyle is all they've got for you. Quick! Look over there!
rd
I'm saying the government can't find or account for most of the recent money, so they're saying look, look what a lavish life style he lived to divert attention from what they don't want to admit.
It couldn't have been a Ponzi scheme because he didn't pay it out. The math isn't there to account for it. But Ponzi scheme is the easiest thing to call it so that's what they're doing. And of course Madoff himself is caling it that. That he self describes something that no one understands and explains nothing about it should be clue one for everyone. But people prefer the spectacle to hearing that no one understands where the money is.
rd